


Little Red Box

by therev



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-24
Updated: 2012-01-24
Packaged: 2017-11-02 08:18:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,068
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/366919
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/therev/pseuds/therev
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cas has something for Dean on his birthday. Set after S6.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Little Red Box

"Hello, Dean."

It's not anything Dean hasn't heard a thousand times, been surprised by, even in that still more asleep than not haze when everything seems possible, so there's a beat before he realizes why that voice, that greeting, should be so strange.

He sits up, suddenly very awake, and the sight of Cas just standing there, like he'd never left, hits him like ice water.

"Cas? What--?"

"I brought you a gift."

There's a box in the angel's hand, just a plain white box with a little bit of string tied around it to keep the lid on. Cas doesn't offer it. He probably thinks Dean won't accept it.

"I thought you were dead, man. Where have you been?"

"That's not important."

"The hell it isn't. Why didn't you come back? You should have...." The argument trails off, caught in his throat, and the room is cold and this seems very strange. He feels strange.

"I was ashamed." Cas says, the reply very distant, like being whispered to across a parking lot.

Dean should be more angry, demand more answers, for Sam at least. That reminds him, and he looks at the double bed across from him and Sam is not there. He would ask where he is but he already knows, the quiet, the color shift, the gauziness of the room around them. "This is a dream."

Cas raises his shoulders, spreads his hands in something like a shrug, an apology.

"But you're really here, right?" Dean asks, needing to know. "In my dream. It's not just me in here, talking to myself, is it?"

"No. Yes. I'm here."

Those words are a relief Dean didn't know he was looking to find, in all the possible meanings behind them. Something changes, a lapse in time, as happens so often in dreams, the kind that takes you from chasing a wendigo through the woods with your kid brother to standing naked in your third grade classroom. One moment Cas is across the room, the next he is sitting hip-flush with Dean on the bed, his coat whispering against Dean's bare shoulder.

"I'm sorry," Cas says, looking down at the white box in his hands and then up at Dean. He seems to glow in the lamplight but Dean knows Cas never needed special effects.

"It's alright," Dean says, and finds that it is. He didn't know before now what he would say given this chance."I guess I do my best thinking when I haven't got anyone to yell at. I know why you did all of it. Hell," he rubs his feet together, shrugs, "I might have even done the same thing if I thought it was right. I can be pretty self righteous. I've done stupider for people I... maybe not that stupid." He laughs. He's a lot more understanding in his dreams.

"Thank you," Cas says after a while and Dean just shrugs against him, watches his hands. One of his nails should be black and ready to fall off, courtesy of a spirit in a sawmilll, but in his dream his hands are perfect. Moments pass as he inspects his fingers and when he looks up again it's daylight outside the window behind them. Dust drifts through the sunlit air but doesn't seem to fall.

"How is Sam?" Cas asks.

"He's disturbingly good. I mean, in a kind of Stepford way I think he's better than before. I just hope he stays okay. He has to be." He really has to.

Cas nods and it shakes the bed and he turns the box over in his hands, finally offers it to Dean.

"I brought you something."

"Oh yeah?" Dean takes the box. There's almost no weight to it. "I don't guess I'm lucky enough for it to be a Leviathan death ray or anything?"

"Sorry, no."

The string pulls easily but the sound of it untying is unexpectedly loud in the room, the friction of thread on thread. It falls to the floor between Dean's bare feet. They've gone cold on the thin carpet and the box lid joins the string between them.

The box is empty.

"Cas, what--" he begins to ask, turns to regard Castiel, still so close beside him, but he finds only lips, soft and warm and dry and soft, so soft. Hardly there at all.

"Happy birthday, Dean Winchester," Cas says with that serious face, like he might as well be telling him to save the world again.

Dean huffs out a breath, laughs at the tail end of it, soft and fond. "Better than socks, I guess."

"I'm glad you like it. I had wanted to give it to you before..." Cas looks away, sighs the way Dean thinks angels never should, and when he looks back it's almost with apology, "for a very long time."

Dean reaches out and the box clatters to the floor. There's another lapse in dream time and they're lying across the bed and Cas's hand is in his between them. "Come back and give it to me for real, then."

"I can't."

"What do you mean? You can't lay this on me and not-- We need you, Cas." He knows his voice sounds desperate and doesn't care. "Even if this-- just come back, okay?"

"I can't, Dean." Cas looks away, tries to turn away but Dean pulls him back, closer. "You might say I'm grounded."

"In heaven?"

"Close enough."

"What does that mean?"

"Don't ask stupid questions, Dean."

"Dammit, Cas..." but in dreams even indirect answers aren't as frustrating as they should be and when Cas touches his face he forgets to be angry, leans into it.

"Will you come back?"

"I said--"

"I mean here. In my dreams."

"As often as you'd like."

"Every night?"

"If you wish it."

Dean swallows, his throat dry, his tongue thick and his chest tight, but he presses his forehead to Cas's, then his lips, and the pressure eases. "I don't know if you're real."

"I thought we were past this. You not believing in angels."

"I don't know if I'm just making you up," he says and outside it's night again and the lamplight has faded and the cold room has gone warm and Cas just holds tight. After a time too long had this not been a dream, Dean says, "but I don't think I'd ever give myself this good a gift."


End file.
